This book was written in 1989, contracted for on 21 May 1990, and published in late 1992 after a delay of more than two years from the time of delivery of the final manuscript. Section (12) of said contract between Matthew Belmonte (the author) and Trillium Press (the publisher) specifies 'If the work is not published within two years of the date of delivery of an acceptable manuscript, the rights revert back to the AUTHOR.' Accordingly, and also in consideration that Trillium Press have failed to render annual statements and to remit royalties as specified by paragraph (5)(e) of said contract, the author claims all rights to this work. It is on this basis that the work is made public.

Except for transmission and temporary storage (lasting less than 24 hours) associated with access via the World Wide Web, no part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

This document is a bit much for HTML to handle. The tables and two-column proofs are not very intelligible, because the tabs aren't working. There are many mathematical formulae implemented as GIFs, and some as ASCII approximations. So it won't look pretty. The solution to this, I suppose, is to buy the book in hardcopy. If you do that, though, please make the corrections listed on this errata sheet.

You are welcome to make a link or a bookmark, or to pass along a URL, or to reference this work in any other way, but if you do so, please reference only this introductory page, not the main text itself. The goal is for all readers to receive this introductory page before being able to continue to the main text.